Wolfsheads in Blood Eagle!

Nothing's Forgotten, Nothing's Ever Forgotten...

Thought I'd share the latest mini-project to hit my paint station, and this is a really fun one. Last year Craig Cartmell released some rules for using his excellent Blood Eagle to recreate the exploits of the famous wolfshead Robin Hood on our tabletops. A few months later I was recovering from knee surgery and binge-watching back to back episodes of Robin of Sherwood. This led to me creating two forces, which you can see elsewhere on my blog (namely here).

Since then a lot of stuff has gotten in the way. But about two months ago we began gaming Blood Eagle and I honestly can't recommend the system enough. It's intuitive, easy to pick up and supported by a wonderful campaign system. You play the game and the rules take care of themselves. We're currently about a third of our way through a Saga and although I'm losing badly, it's brilliant fun. Our conversation turned during one of those games to the subject of Robin Hood. And the rest, as they say, is history!

Since writing my last post on this topic, I came across Firefrge Games' Teutonic Infantry. I'd heard a lot of good things about them, and I thought they would look great as Robert De Rainault's men. Not needing all that many, I went on eBay and was delighted to find one of my regular suppliers offering individual sprues for sale. Thankfully, there are ten men on a frame, and there are more than enough parts on a frame to arm them as I'm needing.

So today I set about making them. They really do make some lovely models, but I have to say I'm not all that fond of the way the parts are attached to the sprue. Some arms are on at funny angles that really get in the way of your clippers. And as you can see in the photo above, they have left no room to get your clippers underneath the bodies to remove them. I was able to clip only a couple of millimetres depth. I had to break them off the sprue by hand. Maybe I've been spoilt by Perry Miniatures, Victrix, Conquest Games, Games Workshop and Gripping Beast Plastics. Maybe all the other companies I've purchased from have been uncommonly kind. But Fireforge is a very different affair. I hope they fix this in the future.

Now, I don't know if this next problem was caused by purchasing a single frame, but I also had an awful job trying to figure out the best angle to fix the arms to the bodies. I've been making models and miniatures for more than thirty years, but I was flummoxed. I have to say, some of the arms that are next to each other don't actually go together. At least, they don't when I try to use them. I had to adjust the placement of crossbow bolt quivers to make sense of some of the poses. I'm not impressed. However, the end result looks better than I thought they did when I was making them.

And then I couldn't resist getting out my band of merrie men. This was when I realised I had begun a period of cheesy grinning as I realised how much fun this was going to be.

I then decided to plough ahead with the fun and base the models so they would be ready for painting. As you can see in the next photo, I'm using my trusty method of applying PVA from the tube.

I then use an old and ruined brush to spread the glue around the base and between the feet. This then gets put in my base mix. This consists of about 70% sand, 20% ballast and 10% cork chippings. Here are the Sheriff's men based and standing around for a few hours while the glue dries.

Of course, this got me wondering about what to do with the Merrie Men. I purchased these three when they first came out in the 90's. The brushwork is from the same time too. As too is the basing method. Ah, the good old days of miliput and a pin!

Because of the age of the paint job, I don't want to go hacking the bases off to replace them with my usual round discs. I doubt I could touch up any scratches that may result. So while the glue dries, I'll just sit here for a bit and ponder whether to leave them as they are for old times' sake, or flock them as I do these days. You know, like this: